


The Vampire's Assistant

by rillalicious



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-06
Updated: 2011-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-16 03:41:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillalicious/pseuds/rillalicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's tricky work, assisting a potions master who also happens to be a vampire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Vampire's Assistant

" _Don't_ touch that," he sneers, that upturned lip curling back from his teeth as if he's going to bite.

"Your work station is disgraceful," she says, without a hit of remorse. He wanted an assistant, after all, and that's what she's providing. Assistance. Even if he's too self-righteous and arrogant to take it. "I was only tidying."

"You are to stay away from that particular cauldron. Is that clear?" And again he's speaking to her as if she's still his student.

"With the hours you expect me to keep, you could at least behave with the slightest bit of decorum," she says.

"I didn't realize that your options had been so varied," he says, silky as ever. "All this time I'd been under the impression that _this_ was all you could get."

Her field of vision narrows on him and she glares. He's right. That last incident with the Wizengamot had sealed her fate at the Ministry. One would think that after a decade of service, they would have gotten used to a witch who spoke her mind, albeit a bit too forcefully at times. With her wand at the ready. _That_ was the part that did her in, even if that Montague tosser had deserved it. Arrogant blowhard. At least they didn't send her to Azkaban for it. In fact, she overheard heard just last week, with some degree of satisfaction, that Montague still panics when he sees a pigeon in the street.

"If you're attempting to kill me with your mind," he says, "it's not working."

She huffs. He hurries over to the cauldron and begins to stir.

Something in the middle of it bubbles up, splatters.

"I said get back," he hisses.

Her brow creases. "What is it?"

"None of your business."

"Oh, but I think my well-being _is_ my business," she shoots back. "Especially when I'm sharing a potions laboratory with a vampire who is apparently brewing something so toxic that he doesn't want me within breathing distance."

"It's not toxic," he says curtly.

 _Oh?_ "Secretive, then?"

"Yes."

"It's not Wolfsbane." She moves closer, rising up on her toes to get a better look over the cauldron's edge. It's horrifically violet. "A lust potion," she says quietly.

"None of your business, nosy girl!"

"Why are you making a lust potion?"

"Why are you asking so many questions? Are you _trying_ to lose the only job anyone in London would offer you?"

"It's not as if you had a line of applicants beating down your door," she says, and it's true. "Who wants to work in a greasy, underground potions lab at all hours of the night for a vampire?"

It occurs to her now--and this probably should have occurred to her a month ago--that he never leaves his lab. Are vampires supposed to have lives? Unlives?

"You needn't remind me that my options were slim," he says. "I'm reminded of that every day."

"Night. You're asleep in a coffin during the day."

"Would you stop that! Your incessant babbling is driving me to the verge of insanity. Do you know what happens when a vampire goes insane?"

"Of course," she says, aware that her calm rejoinder will only infuriate him more, "I've read a gothic novel or two."

"You were hired to work, not to talk." He turns away, reaching for a powder and pouring it into the cauldron carefully.

"I _am_ working. Some of us can accomplish more than one task at a time. And you're _still_ avoiding the question."

"I don't owe you an answer, Miss Granger."

"Never mind, then," she says. "I'll figure it out on my own."

"I'm quite sure you won't."

"Will you never stop underestimating me?"

"Will your nonsensical rambling never cease?"

"If you'd answer my question," she says, quite sensibly, "I would have no reason to keep talking."

He goes quiet, and she returns to chopping comfrey.

"It's a large amount of potion, nearly enough to sell, but since lust potions are illegal, and we both know _you_ would never dabble in illegal potions sales, there must be some other explanation."

He adds something to the cauldron and a small explosion shakes the table.

"Damn."

She turns. "Is something wrong?"

"Silence!"

"What did you do?" she says, and she moves to his side. "Can we fix it?"

"There is no _we_ here, Granger."

"What happened to 'Miss' Granger?"

"Have you always been this insufferable?"

"I'm sure you'd receive varied responses if you asked around."

"Busy yourself elsewhere," he says.

"No. I want to help."

" _Why_?" His face is a study in exasperation, and she knows she's about to get her way.

"It's what you're paying me for, isn't it?"

"I'm paying you to do as you're told."

"Now that's patently untrue. You would have hired someone else if that was what you wanted in an employee."

"It _is_ a lust potion, Miss Granger, or a variation on one. Formulated especially for vampires to use with their... non-vampire lovers."

She wonders how, with his lack of a beating heart, he manages to turn so brilliantly red.

"I see," she says.

"There has been a call for it in the community."

"I thought vampires could mesmerize their vic--erm, lovers."

His eyes narrow to dark, glistening slits. "It isn't meant as a lust potion in the traditional sense. It's purpose is to..." He clears his throat. "Prolong the period leading to orgasm."

The muscles beneath his right eye twitch and he turns his attention back to the cauldron.

"Oh." _A vampire kink, perhaps?_ "I see."

"Miss Granger," he hisses, and he's turned himself to face the wall. The steady confidence has returned to his voice. "The male vampire can sustain... arousal for far longer than his living counterpart. This presents a problem for vampires who choose lovers of the living variety."

"Oh." _Oh._ She's never considered... this. "Is it a problem for you?"

"I believe that question falls firmly under the heading of 'impropriety'." He sniffs. "Besides, you assume I would take a human lover."

"So you have a vampire lover?" She's intrigued and... something else.

His head turns slowly, one eyebrow rising into a sharp arch as he fixes you with a long-suffering look. "For the last four weeks, you have worked here _every_ evening. Do I appear to have time for a vampire lover?"

"I suppose not. Do you want one?"

His expression falls to a mask of stillness, as if everything inside him has suddenly closed off as he appraises her.

"No," he says simply, and then he turns away.

She peers over the edge of the cauldron again. "I know what you need," she says, and then she prepares it.

He's watching her now, and he moves, with that unearthly speed, to her side of the work table. He doesn't speak, and that's how she knows he is in agreement with her methods. If he disapproved, he would let her know. She gathers the prepared ingredients into a clay bowl and he takes it briskly from her hands. She waits, watches as he empties it in thirds, stirring carefully. Clockwise, then counter-clockwise, then clockwise again.

When the steam begins to rise in ocean-blue currents through the air, she can hold her tongue no longer.

"Did it work?"

He snorts. "Do you believe I can tell by looking at it?"

"Oh."

"Yes. _Oh_."

"You need a test subject," she says, hoping to sound aloof.

"That shouldn't be hard to find."

"I'll do it."

"What?" His robes sweep in a wide circle as he turns around.

"I volunteer. To be your test subject."

"But you'll... With whom?"

Her hands have found their way to her hips, a physical reflection of her disapproval. "Severus Snape, don't expect me for a minute to believe you are _that_ obtuse. For pity's sake, you hunt _people_ for survival."

"I haven't had to do that for a month," he says, deflecting again.

She blushes furiously. "Yes, well. I suppose that just proves my point. We're hardly strangers by now. I'll test the potion for you. _With_ you."

"You make it sound so clinical," he says. "That's hardly... titillating."

"Would you like me to be titillating?" She has the absurd urge to start unbuttoning her blouse right now.

"Yes." He states the word so baldly that her eyes go wide and her pulse quickens.

"We'll need a bed," she says, ever sensible.

"Of course." He ladles the dark purple brew into a glass vial. "Follow me."

She follows him through the narrow doorway and up the twisting staircase. His bedroom is small, clean and plain as she expected, and devoid of any sentimental attachments. But she doesn't want to analyze him right now. He hands her the potion.

She drinks.

It's sweet, sickeningly so, and she wrinkles her nose. He snorts and begins to unbutton his robes. She pulls her wand. Is it too much to ask for the slightest bit of romance here? A flick of her wrist and three plain, flickering candles appear.

"You can't be serious," he says.

"It's in the name of research," she says.

His robe pools on the floor.

"Oh," she says.

"Oh?"

"I had you pegged differently."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I would have thought that you'd fold the robe, neatly, and place it on the chair over there."

He's standing in front of her in his underpants, unamused.

"Would that make you more comfortable?" he says finally.

"No." She's unbuttoned the final button on her blouse and she opens it, slides it off her shoulders slowly, lets it drop to the ground. "This makes me feel more comfortable."

He clears his throat, his gaze fixed on her breasts, where she supposes it should be if this is going to work.

"Can you feel the effects of the potion yet?" he asks.

She unzips her skirt and drops it. "No."

"Oh. Shall we wait?"

She steps forward, presses against him, skin to skin except where thin fabric bars the way. "For what?"

He inhales. She's unnerved him, the vampire. She feels ridiculously proud.

"Research," he says with a slight cough.

"This is research," she says, and she rests a hand on his shoulder. He shivers.

"The potion--"

"This," she says, "is cause," her fingertips trail, tenderly, down his chest, over a scar that snakes along his ribs, and down further still, "and effect."

His lips curl back over sharp fangs, as ghostly white as his cool skin.

Long-fingered hands trace the line of her shoulders. He's cold, and dangerous, and she can feel that now, from this proximity. She hadn't thought to be afraid before. She looks up at him, all pale angles and hard lines and beautifully translucent. A lock of slick dark hair falls over his eyes as he lowers his head to look at her, and she pulls in a breath through clenched teeth.

"How did you do that?" she asks.

"Do what?" A quirk of the lips, like a feline toying with its prey.

"Make yourself..."

"A vampire?" That elegant eyebrow rises. "I did not have a choice in that matter. You are well aware of that."

As if he's drawn the wit right out of her with that dark gaze, she stands there speechless. His arms encircle her waist. _The potion_ , something tells her, but she's not so sure that's it. This isn't simply desire, and he's not inside her head, the way she's read about vampires doing it. He's... enchanting. She reaches up to draw her fingertip down the curved slope of his nose. He rocks his hips forward, his erection sliding against her hip and her abdomen, impossibly hard.

"Where did the vampire bite you?" she asks in a near-silent breath. "When you were changed."

"Here." He takes her hand and raises it to his collarbone, drawing it along his skin, to the soft hollow at the base of his neck. She leans in, tiptoed, and draws the very edge of her tongue across the smooth skin, imagining where the bites may have been.

He hisses.

And they begin to touch one another as if playing chess. A thumb brushing across a cheekbone, then fingers splayed over a breast in counter-attack. She is _mesmerized_ without being mesmerized, and he is painting across her body a story of blood and resurrection, telling her his own history with every flicker of his tongue, every pinch of her sensitive skin between his fingertips. She's on her back on the bed now, his cool skin pressing down on her, then suddenly she's on top of him. It all happens in the space of heartbeats, like frames from a movie pulled out of order. He moves so _fast_ , but she sees everything. She feels everything.

She spreads her knees on either side of his body, looking down on him, her hair cloaking both their faces, entombing him. Candlelight bounces off the wall above the bed, illuminates the plane of his forehead. She presses a kiss there. He's still hard as marble, pressed against the bottom of her thigh as his hips rise off the bed. She slithers down his body, watching his face as she nudges the tip of his erection with her chin. He makes a noise that sends a shot of heat up her spine.

They have time, nearly all the time in the world. That's why they're here. She teases him with her tongue, with her lips, with her teeth when he's not expecting it. She licks her way down, then covers him with her mouth and sucks hard on the way back up. The heat of her mouth warms his skin; she didn't know that was possible. He's so very hard, yet velvety against the touch of her lips. He hasn't moved, not a twitch, as he watches her from the pillow. _This is how you entrance a vampire,_ she thinks. She has no desire to test the theory on others. She slides her teeth along his shaft, scraping just hard enough to make him gasp, then swallowing down again, the back of her throat working in time with her lips.

When she finally pulls away, the corners of her mouth tugged up into a grin, sore in the most satisfying way, he reaches for her. In the time it takes her to blink, he's turned her over and is trailing his fingertips around her breasts in lazy concentric circles. He leans in, drawing one sharp fang around her nipple, and a shudder rides over her shoulders and down her back. His laugh is deep and throaty, soft and not at all caustic and she smiles in return. Then his tongue darts out to follow the path of his incisor.

That wicked mouth. That _lovely_ wicked mouth.

She twists in his arms, and he showers her body with kisses, teasing her with the prickling of fangs that never quite break the skin. She's out of her mind with desire but not... anxious. The potion's working. She doesn't care. She wants to warm him, to heat his cold, unliving body. She rolls them over again.

She's on her knees, spreading over him, drawing him into her, like he belongs there. Is this part of the potion too? She has his shoulders and he's clutching her waist, riding up into her with palpable restraint, as if he's afraid of letting go. But she knows what he is, and what he can be, and her blood is thrumming through her veins, her pulse beating like a drum in the soft dip beneath her jaw. She extends her neck, slowly, gracefully.

"Bite me."

He grunts, a sound of unearthly frustration.

"Please," she says. "You've done it before."

"That was different. It wasn't..."

"During sex?"

"Yes."

"It's all right. I don't think you'll hurt me."

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you."

"Bite me."

" _Hermione_..." His mouth falls open, as if his bloodlust has taken on a life of its own, as if the sound of her name on his lips was a command instead of a plea.

She is terrified and enthralled, her eyes falling closed as she lowers her throat to his lips.

It doesn't hurt. Her body tightens around him, milks its pleasure from him as he drinks. She can smell her blood on the air, iron and red wine. She can feel his intoxication. And then she comes, in an endless, gasping rush. He's still drinking, and she can tell he's close too. _So_ close... The world spins, she rocks over him, and blackness swallows it all.

 

She wakes later, some unknown time later. Another night? Yes, it's night; the cold silence surrounds her like a blanket.

"Good morning." He is lying beside her, as still as death.

 _Oh._ "I suppose you were right then."

"I suppose I was," he says.

"Well." She wonders for the silver lining. "Thank you for not letting me die."

"My pleasure."

"Clearly it was."

"The potion worked," he says.

"Fabulous news," she says. "It's a pity I no longer have need for it. I'm famished, by the way."

"Ah, yes," he says. "We'll get to that."

"Soon, I hope."

"Yes, soon. There's a goat in the basement. I procured it while you recovered."

"A goat? How very romantic?"

"Would you have preferred another expendable animal? A Weasley, perhaps?"

"That was very unkind," she says.

"Indeed it was." He's sitting up now, the movement so quick and fluid it's as if he has been that way all along. "I could teach you to hunt, though I'm under the distinct impression you would have some sort of philosophical objection."

"You know me so well." The corner of her mouth curls up and she sits up too, so fast that she's disoriented. It's an odd feeling, having no heartbeat. "A willing lab assistant?"

"I had one of those. It didn't work out." His gaze slides over to her.

"You say that as if this is my fault."

"Of course. Blame the vampire. Isn't that always the way?"

"You have such a tender ego for a dead man." She sighs thoughtfully. "This time we won't involve lust potion. We'll find one willing to let us share."

"Hmmm. It has merit."

"As long as we can find a qualified out-of-work wizard."

"Or witch," he says.

"No."

"No?"

"Just look what happened the last time you hired a witch as a lab assistant. Do I strike you as the kind of vampire willing to take that risk?" She frowns. "Is it vampire or vampiress?"

"I believe vampire is acceptable. And I think I have a potential candidate."

"Good, because I'm simply ravenous. I don't think one goat will do."

"There is always the Weasley solution," he says.

"I enjoy the Weasleys as friends, not dinner," she says firmly.

"Pity. The dragon keeper has a good deal of meat on him. Then get yourself dressed," he says. "We're going to Malfoy Manor."

She snorts. "I don't think Lucius Malfoy is looking to become a potions lackey."

"Not Lucius," he says. "But the last time we spoke he mentioned that his grandson was lacking direction."

"Scorpius, then."

"Do you find that agreeable?"

She smiles as she stands from the bed. "Delicious."

 

[END]


End file.
